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North Korea’s New Hard LineThe deadly attack on the South signals an extended period of aggression, due to a leadership shift in Pyongyang.by Jerry Guo November 27, 2010

North Korea’s surprise attack last week on the South Korean outpost Yeonpyeong is sharply worrying not just because it marks the first time civilians have been targeted and killed since the end of the war more than a half century ago. Taken in context with its recent deadly brinksmanship—the sinking of the Cheonan, increasing border scuffles, the revelation of a secret nuclear-production plant—and it’s clear this is no longer mere theatrics on the part of the Hermit Kingdom.

Western officials and Korean hands, however, continue to see—or hope—that this latest escalation is North Korea’s jostling for a better hand at the negotiating table; in particular, the country continues to suffer severe food shortages. The uncomfortable truth? What we are seeing is more likely the start of a hardline policy shift, the likes of which the world has not seen since the Stalinist regime’s last power succession, when the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, took the reins from his father, Kim Il-sung. Why this scenario is so terrifying is that outside powers—even China, the closest thing North Korea has to a major ally—have little leverage in changing the North’s schizophrenic behavior.

According to two top administration officials, who were not authorized to speak because they are involved in the ongoing deliberations, the White House is adopting a wait-and-see attitude, if nothing else because options to deal with an emboldened North Korean regime are so limited. Granted, the carrier USS Washington has been sent on a four-day joint drill with the South Korean Navy, but the move is largely symbolic. Washington is in a particularly tight spot because any concessions—namely returning to the Six-Party Talks—could be seen as encouraging this sort of bullying, say the two sources.

Indeed, last week’s shelling took place in the same waters as the sinking this March of the South Korean military vessel the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors. News also emerged in late November, from two returning American delegations, that the nuclear-armed regime has secretly built a second nuclear-production plant, with many analysts expecting the North Korean military to proceed with its third nuclear test shortly.

Growing evidence of North Korean drone flybys and threats in the months leading up to the raid hint at a premeditated attack. But the move looks to be directed inward, suggesting that the Dear Leader’s third son, Kim Jong-un, has already begun the process of cementing his power base in the military-first society. The baby-faced heir apparent was thought to have played a critical role in the Cheonan sinking. These incidents are similar to the deadly antics of Kim Jong-il in his early years as dictator-in-waiting. In 1983 he orchestrated an assassination attempt on the South Korean president, who was traveling in Burma. The failed plot killed 21 people, including several members of the South Korean cabinet. Four years later he allegedly masterminded the bombing of a South Korean airliner bound for Seoul, according to North Korean agent Kim Hyon-hui. The attack killed all 115 on board.

This return to Cold War tactics marks the rise of the generals, who are cementing their control over the younger Kim. Since last year, when succession rumors began trickling out, the public voice of Pyongyang has emerged in increasingly bellicose tones from military agencies, such as the National Defense Commission and the Korean People’s Army, rather than from the relatively moderate Foreign Ministry.

The power dynamic is changing fast: Kim Jong-il looks to be bending to his hawkish generals—rather than the other way around—in order to solidify the rickety succession to his son. Though he has no prior military experience, the younger Kim was given a four-star-general rank this September during a rare party conference.PHOTOS: North Korea's Propaganda Art »

It’s this infighting, rather than an urge to return to the six-party negotiating table, that likely drove the recent aggressions. Historically, the North Koreans have never cut a deal with weak foreign leaders, and both Washington, with its midterm election rout of the Democrats, and Tokyo, with Naoto Kan’s record-low approval ratings, have embattled leaders. More strategically, the Pyongyang regime may sense that it’s not going to get a favorable—or long-lasting—deal until after 2012, when the U.S., South Korea, and Russia have their presidential elections and Hu Jintao steps down in China.

The internal jockeying has the grave potential to tip the Korean Peninsula into more serious or sustained fighting. Although the South Koreans returned artillery fire, their response has been measured, if not considered weak. But Seoul’s stance is hardening, with the conservative president, Lee Myung-bak—who broke away from the country’s longstanding “Sunshine Policy” toward the North—ordering island defenses to be fortified and more aggressive rules of engagement. After a visit by the American commanding officer in South Korea to Yeonpyeong on Friday, the North responded by launching an alarming artillery drill, and its official news agency warned in a statement that “the situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war.” South Korea’s defense minister was also replaced last week in the face of criticism over the country’s meek military response. Not that there is much more room to work with: not long after the Cheonan sinking, Lee dropped demands for an official apology as a precondition for talks and has abandoned the idea of using loudspeakers to blast North Korean guards at the demilitarized zone with anticommunist propaganda.

The wild card is China, which according to analysts is growing increasingly exasperated with Pyongyang. While there is no public split over North Korea policy, the last thing Beijing wants is an emboldened Pyongyang setting off a confrontation that embroils China against the U.S. at a time when China’s next leader, the untested Xi Jinping, is preparing to take over. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are calling their Chinese counterparts this week to plead for a tougher stand, possibly by urging Beijing’s support for U.N. diplomatic action. Beijing has been loath to pressure its unstable neighbor; the question is whether Beijing sees these latest attacks as a real threat to regional peace, and thus a greater threat than instability within North Korea.

For now, no one can afford a war, and unless North Korea strikes the South Korean mainland, it seems as though the region could be in for a long slog of hand-wringing provocations. It looks like Kim and his goons have once again managed to come out on top, happy that they are at least back on the world’s center stage.

With John Barry in Washington, Takashi Yokota in Tokyo, and Melinda Liu in Beijing

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South Korea launched a live-fire military exercise on a border island Monday, despite North Korean threats of deadly retaliation, as UN diplomacy on the regional crisis broke down.

But in an apparent sign of compromise over its nuclear ambitions, CNN said North Korea had agreed with US troubleshooter Bill Richardson to permit the return of UN atomic inspectors to ease tensions on the peninsula.

"The drill has started," a ministry spokesman told AFP around 2:30 pm (0530 GMT). An AFP photographer sheltering in a bunker on Yeonpyeong island confirmed he heard the sound of artillery.

"Our armed forces are now on alert and jet fighters are on airborne alert," the ministry spokesman said.

Yonhap news agency said two destroyers had also been deployed in forward positions in the Yellow Sea. Focus: N.Korea has at least one other uranium enrichment site: US

An emergency UN Security Council meeting failed to agree a statement on the crisis, and Russia warned that the international community was now left without "a game plan" to counter escalating tensions.

After a similar exercise by marines based on Yeonpyeong on November 23, the North fired some 170 shells onto or around the island, killing four people including civilians and damaging dozens of homes.

It had threatened even deadlier retaliation if this week's drill went ahead, saying South Korean shells from such exercises regularly land in its waters.

The North disputes the Yellow Sea border drawn by United Nations forces after the 1950-53 Korean War. It claims the waters around Yeonpyeong as its own. Related article: UN Security Council fails to reach accord on Korea crisis

The North's military appears to be preparing for a counter-attack, removing covers from coastal artillery guns and forward-deploying some batteries, a military source told Yonhap.

But CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer, who is travelling with Richardson in Pyongyang, said there were signs of deal-making.

North Korea had agreed with Richardson, a former US ambassador to the UN, to let inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency go back to its Yongbyon nuclear facility, Blitzer said.

It had also agreed to allow fuel rods for the enrichment of uranium to be shipped to an outside country, and to the creation of a military commission and hotline between the two Koreas and the United States, Blitzer said.

A veteran negotiator with the reclusive communist state, New Mexico Governor Richardson was due to brief reporters in Beijing later Monday after ending his five-day visit to Pyongyang.

At the UN, China fended off Western demands that its ally North Korea be publicly condemned for the November 23 artillery assault, diplomats said.

They said it even rejected a proposed statement which did not mention North Korea or the name of Yeonpyeong.

"Now we have a situation with very serious political tension and no game plan on the diplomatic side," said Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin.

The foreign ministers of China and Russia held telephone talks Saturday and urged South Korea to cancel its military exercise. But its ally the United States defended its right to self-defence.

Last month's bombardment was the first of civilian areas in the South since the war. It sparked outrage in the South, which rushed more troops and guns to frontline islands.

About 20 US soldiers -- part of a 28,500-strong force stationed in the South -- are on Yeonpyeong to provide back-up in the latest drill, the US military said.

Five delegates from the United Nations Command and the Military Armistice Commission, which supervises the truce that ended the war, are also on the island, another official said.

Apart from the military there are about 280 civilians including reporters on Yeonpyeong, which is 12 kilometres (seven miles) from the North's coast.

The North said Saturday the upcoming exercise "would make it impossible to prevent the situation on the Korean peninsula from exploding and escape its ensuing disaster".

South Korea, heavily criticised for a perceived weak response to last month's bombardment, has vowed to hit back hard against any new attack.

It says the exercise is a routine defensive drill, with guns pointed away from the North and shells landing 10 kilometres (six miles) south of the sea border known as the Northern Limit Line.

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South Korea ponders deployment of cruise missiles on West Sea islandsSouth Korea is considering the deployment of cruise missiles with a range of 1,500 km on its islands in the West Sea (Yellow Sea), Jane's has learnt. The South Korean military is examining a plan to build a new base on Baengnyeong island equipped with indigenous Hyunmoo 3 cruise missiles, the range of which makes them capable of targeting all North Korean territory

Attaining lasting peace between the two Koreas remains elusive 60 years after the signing of the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 conflict.

FOR the past 60 years, the armistice agreement has served as a regime to ward off another major aggression. But the failure to formally end the 1950-53 conflict has left the two Koreas at neither peace nor war.

The unique state of armistice veering between military tension and peaceful cooperation across the heavily-fortified border can come to an end when the two Koreas and other parties agree to a permanent peace regime.

But the task remains elusive amid North Korea’s nuclear adventurism and differences among concerned parties including the United States and China over how to address it.

“The armistice regime has contributed to staving off a second Korean War. But the 60th anniversary is not something to boast of loudly as the two Koreas have failed to reach an agreement for an enduring peace, with Pyongyang incessantly trying to nullify the armistice and fomenting inter-Korean distrust,” said Kim Yeoul-soo, a security professor at Sungshin Women’s University.

The armistice, with its enforcement organisations and mutual rules and principles to prevent hostilities, has served as a key mechanism to help manage border crises, defuse military tension and prevent the recurrence of another all-out war.

But some argue the armistice is already in tatters, as Pyongyang has violated it numerous times and withdrawn communist representatives from the Military Armistice Commission and Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission – the two major entities that observe the agreement.

In breach of the armistice, the reclusive state has attempted to infiltrate into the South more than 1,950 times and conducted at least 990 other provocations since it was signed. The shelling of Yeonpyeongdo Island in 2010, which killed two civilians and two marines, underscored its brazen disregard of the agreement.

Pyongyang’s long-range rocket launch in December, its third atomic test in February and menacing war threats from March through April underlined a precarious peace and the pressing need for a more effective, permanent institution to ensure stability.

Temporary armistice

UN Commander Mark W. Clark, North Korea’s Supreme Commander Kim Il-sung and Peng Dehuai, commander of the Chinese People’s Volunteers, inked the armistice on July 27, 1953 after two years of gruelling negotiations over the demilitarised zone, military demarcation line, prisoners of war and other truce-related issues.

The armistice came as neither side was achieving a clear victory, with both grinding the other down during the first major Cold War conflict.

“Kim Il-sung was more reluctant to stop fighting, but the US threatened to use nuclear weapons against the North if an armistice was not achieved, and that pushed North Korea and China into agreeing to stop the fighting,” said Bruce Bennett, senior defence analyst at the RAND Corporation.

The agreement has so far been maintained despite unceasing North Korean provocations. This is because neither side wants to face the catastrophic results of another Korean War.

“In practice, North Korea has carried out many attacks and other provocations against the South that were acts of war which the South and the US could have used to justify declaring war on the North. But neither the South nor the US have wanted a second Korean War,” said Bennett.

“The armistice is now a unique arrangement because the ROK (Republic of Korea) and the US have not wanted to pay the price of defeating North Korea in war, and the North has feared that it would lose a second Korean War, especially against the US-ROK conventional superiority that has existed for the last several decades,” he added.

The armistice was a “temporary” cessation of hostilities. The three parties recommended a higher-level political meeting be held three months later to resolve Korea-related issues including the withdrawal of foreign troops from the peninsula.

The political gathering took place from April through June in 1954 in Geneva, Switzerland with the participation of foreign ministers from 19 countries – the two Koreas, China, the former Soviet Union and 15 UNC member states. But it failed to permanently end the war amid disputes over the UNC role, its activities and other issues.

Although it was meant to be only provisional, the armistice has become entrenched as a regime to prevent another full-blown war.

With the US-led UNC backed by the South Korea-US Combined Forces Command that offers a strong deterrent against escalation by the North, the armistice has survived a series of violations by Pyongyang, which has long sought to nullify the agreement while seeking a peace treaty with Washington.

The North has faced deeper international isolation with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, bungled economic policies and flooding, which led to one of its worst famines.

During this time, South Korea also strove to build a stronger independent military, which has apparently unnerved an increasingly cornered Pyongyang.

“From the 1990s, the North withdrew from the MAC and NNSC that oversee the armistice. When facing the new millennium, it sought to nullify the Northern Limit Line, a de facto border in the West Sea. Now, it steps up verbal threats to nullify the armistice document,” said Yeoul-soo.

In 1991, the North boycotted its participation in a plenary session of the Military Armistice Commission, an organisation that oversees the implementation of the armistice and handles violations, in protest of a South Korean two-star general having been appointed as the UNC representative at the commission.

In April 1994, the North withdrew its representatives from the MAC, paralysing the crucial bilateral communication channel.

It then set up the North’s Korean People’s Army mission at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjeom about a month later.

Pyongyang also forced Czech and Polish representatives on the communist side out of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in 1993 and 1995, respectively. The NNSC reports to the MAC on its investigations of military-related affairs in two Koreas.

With the absence of the communication channels for crisis management, the UNC and the North began a general-level dialogue in 1998. The talks were forged after Pyongyang disregarded regular armistice procedures and sought direct high-level military talks with the United States. The North has also called for the dissolution of the UNC, the core body to keep the armistice. Most recently in March, Pyongyang’s Supreme Command said it would scrap the armistice and stop its Panmunjeom mission’s activities.

Conflict over armistice parties

A major bone of contention over the armistice is who are its signatories. Pyongyang has long sought to engage in armistice-related talks directly with Washington, arguing South Korea was not part of the three parties that inked it.

Seoul’s position is that it is a legitimate, principal party that is bound by the agreement, given that Clark signed the agreement on behalf of South Korea and other UN allies in the war.

While US-led UN forces were under a unitary chain of command, Chinese and North Korean troops did not have a single commander who represented them – the reason why the communist side had two commanders sign it.

Seoul has long proven itself as a direct party to the armistice. South Korean troops have played a central role in observing and implementing the agreement in border areas. A two-star South Korean general has led the UN Military Armistice Commission since 1991.

As a key party to it, it participated in a political meeting over a durable peace in 1954. It also was a key party of the four-way forum – involving the two Koreas, the United States and China – over a peace mechanism and tension reduction from 1997 to 1999.

All parties to the armistice have explored ways to build a peace system on the peninsula. But their efforts have failed. Differences over how to negotiate a deal and what conditions Pyongyang should meet to initiate peace talks have derailed those efforts.

The North has sought a peace treaty to replace the armistice in a move that Seoul and Washington suspect is intended to pressure the United States to withdraw its forces from the peninsula, remove its promise of nuclear protection for the South and stop the allied military drills targeting the North.

Washington and Seoul have consistently urged Pyongyang to take meaningful steps toward denuclearisation before any negotiation on a peace treaty and improved relations.

But Pyongyang insists a peace treaty should be inked before its denuclearisation.

It argues it would continue to maintain its “nuclear deterrent” to protect itself from what it calls the hostile US policy toward it and outside nuclear threats. It also says denuclearisation should come not just in the North but in the entire peninsula, apparently suggesting that the United States remove its nuclear protection for the South.

After three nuclear tests, Pyongyang now claims to be a nuclear-armed state, and demands it and the United States hold talks over nuclear arms reduction rather than peninsular denuclearisation.

“What Pyongyang wants is beyond just signing the peace treaty with the US. It wants the pullout of the US troops here so that it can threaten the South – as it pleases – with its nuclear arsenal, and then it can push for a reunification according to its terms,” said Yeoul-soo.

“The armistice is to ensure the minimum level of peace, but the North has threatened to scrap even the armistice. Having said this, would a peace treaty with the North be helpful to ensure peace here?”

Concerned parties to the armistice have discussed the issue of building a peace system many times – at the Geneva meeting in 1954, inter-Korean high-level talks in 1992, four-party talks involving the two Koreas, the United States and China from 1991 through 1996 and six-party talks including Russia and Japan and the second inter-Korean summit in 2007. — The Korea Herald/ Asia News Network

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